This month I have had the wonderful opportunity to work 3 days a week with a feeding program in the Santa Rosa Barrio. This program is one after my own heart and I completely fell in love with the women who make the program work and every child that came through the line.
Here is how it worked; Torre Fuerte, the church we have been working with, would host a meeting every Saturday afternoon for the children to be able to sing songs, watch dramas, and hear the gospel message. Every Saturday they teach the children different Bible stories and relate them to their everyday lives. Every Saturday a child must attend in order to receive a ticket for the upcoming weeks meals. This ticket has written on the back the days of the week they come to eat and how many children are in their family, since many of the older children come bearing multiple plates & cups for younger siblings.
We never actually found out how early the cooking began but, we would arrive at 8:30 every morning to help cook and they would already have a pot on to boil. When I say they would have a pot on I mean, the pot would be about the size of a small kiddie pool and be precariously stacked on bricks over an open flame. The ladies would promptly put us to work cleaning rice, cutting yuka root, or making juice (I have gotten really good at this by the way.) The joke about the juice actually became this; taste it, when it tastes good to you add another half bag of sugar and then it’s done! I would always forget that they added ice to the juice and it would be too weak for the kids the way I wanted to make it. The sweet ladies would smile and respond with my favorite spanish word “mas.”
Monday and Friday were meat, beans, rice, and juice days, while Wednesdays we would make a traditional Nicaraguan soup. The children were always so appreciative. In fact, we never had to ask what time it was because you could see the children peering around the house salivating in response to the odors filling the air in the barrio. Once the food was all prepared everyone took their posts. I was usually with the juice but on Wednesdays I got to serve the meat for the soup. One of the ladies was posted at the front gate to the yard where we served checking tickets and making sure everyone was accounted for. They would come to the table in groups of 5 to which I would respond, ” Vaso aki, platos ahi.” (Cups here, plates there) The kids would come in with all kinds of interesting cups, plates, and bowls. On numerous occasions I filled plastic bags for juice cups and buckets would hold their meal for the day. On some of the biggest containers we would have to ask “quantos?” to find out how many children would be fed from the one container. Many times the little ones would drink their juice and then pass the cup back to the older sibling for their turn on the juice. We would serve until the last child had a plate full or, unfortunately occuring the last two times we served, we would run out of food.
Over 120 suntanned, tattered, dirty, and absolutely beautiful children would end up with a tummy full. Every time they walked through the line we said a prayer for their protection and provision. We claimed their souls for Jesus Christ and we got to know their names. We would see them around the barrio when we weren’t at the feeding programs and they would smile and wave or shout hola gringas! We fell head over heels in love with the boys and girls of Santa Rosa and Carilara barrios and their faces will forever be part of my heart.
Please continue to pray for these children. They face many dangers all because of where they were born. There are many in the barrios, and that come to this town, meaning only harm to these children and drugs run rampant through the streets here. Pray for the women who cook every day at the program and manage to juggle their own families at the same time. These women are SO gifted and God has a major annointing on them. Love goes into every ingredient of every meal. Pray also for their spouses. Men of God are unusual here. There are plenty of men who are not who they should be but these men are desiring to be men who hunger for God. They are all weighed down by the burden of providing for their families in an economy that is not booming with work. Pray for Torre Fuerte, that they will continue to be burdened for their community and the needs of the widow and orphan among them. Pray for the youth of Granada. 60% of the population of Granada is under 18 and they need an anchor to hold onto in the midst of the storm that is their life.
